Almost 70 walls across all continents are enforcing state control. They rip through people’s lives and lands – denying their basic freedom of movement, and expanding state violence, causing thousands of deaths every year. Walls fortify borders, separate the rich from the poor, and the powerful from the oppressed. They are monuments of expulsion, of exclusion and of exploitation. November 9th marks fifteen years since construction began on Israel’s apartheid wall, which aims to annex up to 60% of the West Bank and encircle Palestinians on 13% of their territory.

Around the world a solidarity movement in support of the Palestinian struggle for liberation is growing, today we present a photo from San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico, lands where the revolutionary spirit of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, EZLN) lives and thrives. Solidarity across borders !

January’s revelations about the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers assisting with the design and installation of yet another border wall around Palestine, this one placed under the ground, is just the latest development in a series of relationships between: North American neoliberalism, U.S. domestic and foreign drug policy, structural anti-latino racism in the U.S., the Egyptian government, Mexico’s ruling elite and Israel’s military occupation of Palestine. To find connections between various international interests is not surprising but the links between, for example, Mexican classism and President Mubarak’s aversion to democracy are perhaps less known. How the occupation forces action from one and provides tools for the other is a connection worth exploring as is the potential for joint struggle between individuals and communities focusing on seemingly disparate issues amidst broader struggles for justice.

Two days ago, the same day we discussed violence, the ineffable Condoleezza Rice, a US official, declared that what was happening in Gaza was the Palestinians’ fault, due to their violent nature.

The underground rivers that crisscross the world can change their geography, but they sing the same song. And the one we hear now is one of war and pain.

Not far from here, in a place called Gaza, in Palestine, in the Middle East, right here next to us, the Israeli government’s heavily trained and armed military continues its march of death and destruction.